


Catch

by Arazsya



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Anal Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, Victim Blaming, falling, heights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:00:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24953437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: “You,” Martin manages, but he can’t splutter enough air into his lungs at once to finish the thought.“Me!” Simon agrees. He throws his arms wide and grins broadly, expectantly, at Martin. “How do you like my planetarium?”
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Simon Fairchild
Comments: 9
Kudos: 34
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	Catch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SouthernContinentSkies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernContinentSkies/gifts).



> Hope you like it! sorry if it's jossed before reveals. (Currently-listening-to-174-edit, damnit Jonny could you not have waited one more week.)

The building that waits for them is squat and nondescript, and not at all what Martin had been expecting. It’s grey, washed over in the same tones of dismal daylight that have painted most of the apocalypse, without no visible windows or anything else that someone might have been able to add even a little bit of an architectural flourish to. No height to it, no artistry, no fun or charm. It just sits there, so out of place in even the seeping dourness of their surroundings, that Martin could almost believe that it had just been dropped there by some careless giant, if it weren’t for the lack of structural damage.

Martin doesn’t want to go in. He says nothing. If he tells Jon he’s uneasy with it, he’ll get a tired, guilt-edged smile and a reminder that that’s the point, or maybe an assurance that staying outside wouldn’t actually be any better in the grand scheme of things. So Martin trails after him, as he brings them around to the door, a plain affair with an industrial metal bar to grip, caught in his wake.

It’s completely dark inside. Jon seems unbothered by it, his hand in Martin’s leading him true even after the door swings shut behind them. He’s not even aware there’s anything to bump into until his own eyes begin to adjust, when he tries to take a step on his own and something knocks into the top of his thigh. Martin freezes, but nothing grabs at him out of the blackness, no angry shriek or seethe of tentacles. Just an edge, hard but not cold, like plastic.

“What is this place?” Martin asks. He keeps his voice hushed, tries to shift closer to Jon as he speaks, just in case.

“It’s the Vast,” Jon says, at his usual volume. He’s facing away, Martin can tell, but can’t discern a direction, let alone figure out what he might be looking at.

“Sure.” Martin tries to push it louder, echo Jon’s apparent confidence, but he can’t quite make it happen. “That’s what you told me outside. I just… I don’t understand. I thought it would be, I don’t know, more? That there might be blue, or something? What exactly _is_ it?”

Jon sighs. It’s soft, barely perceptible, but the room is silent otherwise, and Martin’s grown used to listening for it.

“It’s a planetarium,” he says. “Don’t–”

Martin looks up, and the world falls out from under him. He’s vaguely aware of a thud, of Jon’s hands on his shoulders, his face, but all he can see, all the can _think_ , is above. There is an impossible depth there, where the ceiling should be. A faint glimmer of stars, so distant that he can only see them when he doesn’t look directly, that he doubts their existence at all when he does. The void reaches down for him and tells him that it is up, that he is already falling, and–

“Martin!” Jon wrenches his face back down, dragging his focus back to the silhouette in front of him. For a moment, there is something wrong about the eyes, and then it’s just Jon again. “Don’t look up. I told you–”

“Sorry,” Martin tries, but his breath is catching, lost turning somewhere past his spleen, and it won’t fill his throat properly.

“No,” Jon insists, far too quickly, though he can’t quite force out that undercurrent of exasperation. “It’s fine. Just, don’t do it again.” He helps Martin to his feet, fusses over righting him, and Martin bites down on another apology, tries to hide the impulse for it in another glance around. He can see better now, rows of empty seats, fading off into the gloom. There’s an impression of scale that he’s sure shouldn’t be possible, from what he remembers of the building outside, but possibility is a broken concept now.

“Where is everyone?” he asks.

“They’re falling,” Jon says, and gestures upwards. “I, er…”

“Yeah.” Martin can see where he’s going with it, that awkwardness around it that Martin supposes he likes, because it at least makes it feel like all the misery he’s about to spew out isn’t really _him_. “You have to do your… thing.”

Jon nods. He folds down the edge of the nearest seat, moves as if to sit, and then hesitates, lays a hand briefly against Martin’s arm.

“Don’t go far,” he says, softly. “Or, don’t go at all. I don’t know, try sticking your fingers in your ears again. Don’t sit in any of the seats. Understand?”

“Right.” Martin goes to offer the closest he can get to a reassuring pat, but the tone of Jon’s voice sits uncomfortably at the edge of his teeth, stops him in place. “Okay. Sure.”

“If you want to wait outside I won’t start until you’re clear. I just…” Jon hesitates, his touch growing a little heavier. “If you fall, I don’t know if I – don’t fall, Martin.”

“I’ll do my best,” Martin says. He glances back in what he thinks was the direction they came in from, but he can’t see the door anymore, if it’s even still there. There’s no faint glow of a fire exit, no lights on the floor or attendant to guide him. He’ll get lost, he thinks. Fumbling his way back through the darkness, tripping over the edges of the rows, and then Jon will have to come and find him again, rescue him from whatever mess he’ll have got himself into. “I’ll stay.”

Jon nods, and his touch ghosts away from Martin’s skin. Martin reaches up to block his ears, and watches as Jon pushes his seat back, angling his face up like a man in supplication. He turns away a little, when he sees Jon’s mouth start to move, trying to afford him some little privacy.

It feels stupid, standing there with his hands like that, his elbows sticking out like he’s been frozen in the middle of some weird disco dance that only people trying to embarrass their children would ever try and do, but there’s no point in him hearing it. It hadn’t helped, with the Dark. Jon keeps saying there’s nothing they _can_ do to help.

He scuffs at the ground with his shoes and counts, to try and keep his thoughts from hovering around what Jon might be saying anyway. Simple and slow, and maybe this will end up being one of the shorter ones.

A little over a minute in, he has to adjust how he’s standing. It’s nothing that he thinks too much about. Just like standing on a carpet that’s over a wonky floorboard. A slight misalignment, easily corrected. Maybe that whatever lino they’d used on the floor had got some air trapped under it.

Forty more seconds, and this time it feels like it actually turns under him. He has to take a step, grab for one of the rows of seats to steady himself, his hands dropping from his ears.

He doesn’t look up. He knows he mustn’t look up, but anything that might of resembled a sense of balance is twisting, and he’s not sure that he could say which way _is_ up, anymore.

“Jon,” he says, and the word warps on its way out of his mouth.

There’s no response. Only the soft rise and fall of Jon’s voice as he recounts suffering that Martin refuses to hear.

The floor pitches, and Martin is sure that he drops to his knees, but when he goes to get up again he’s still standing. The drop above him is encroaching on all the other directions, gravity spooling out between him and the chairs he’s clutching at.

“ _Jon!_ ” 

Martin tries to close his eyes, then. He doesn’t want to be aware of any of it, hopes that if he cuts that off it might be easier to keep his feet, but he’s too late. He sees Jon break off mid-sentence, sees the sudden slack horror on his face, sees him lunge for him, hands outstretched, but then he’s falling, and Jon is gone.

The stars grow no closer. Perhaps the planetarium itself becomes one, a far-off point of light and understanding that Martin would never be able to reach, even if he were plummeting towards it. He screams, but the rushing past his face rips his voice away from him before he can hear it, leaves only an ache in his throat where it steals his breath. He snatches for something, anything, but his fist closes on nothing. His head streams with the noise of it, panic lit inside him like a flare, and still the void goes on.

When it doesn’t anymore, Martin scarcely notices. His mind has folded in on itself, and stays that way until his drifting hand knocks into something solid. It scrapes at the skin between his knuckles, forcing him back to himself, and he starts, breathes in water and flounders, coughing and flailing as the tide drags at his clothes.

A reaching finger stubs into that solid thing again, and Martin clutches at it, pulls himself closer, blinking his eyes clear. There’s a shape above him, still hazy, and beyond that, a broad expanse of blue, shifting and glimmering.

“Hello there.”

Martin nearly drops below the surface again, struggles to control his recoiling. The thing he has hold of is a raft, tiny and insignificant, a couple of broken spars held together with nails that’ll rust to nothing before the ocean could ever notice their existence. It had probably known nothing of the ship they had come from, either.

Simon Fairchild, sitting cross-legged in the middle of it, somehow doesn’t seem quite so small anymore, in the middle of it all.

“You,” Martin manages, but he can’t splutter enough air into his lungs at once to finish the thought.

“Me!” Simon agrees. He throws his arms wide and grins broadly, expectantly, at Martin. “How do you like my planetarium?” 

“It’s… fine,” Martin tries. He struggles to get a better grip of the raft, and Simon shifts at the same time, stretching out one of his legs so that the bottom of his shoe rests against where Martin’s hand grips at the wood. Martin stops, waits for the shove, but Simon doesn’t go any further, just sits there, apparently content with the faint touch of rubber sole against skin. “But I need to get back to Jon.”

“Oh, of course.” Simon moves again, his other leg splashing into the water on Martin’s other side up to the ankle. Utterly unbothered by it, the picture of relaxation. “Long way, though.”

“So–” Martin moves awkwardly in the water, trying to grope his way along the raft to give Simon more room. “–the sooner I start, the sooner–”

“Not really how it works here,” Simon comments. He peers down at Martin, the light off the sea sparkling over his face, and there’s nothing there to indicate that he doesn’t mean it as brightly as he says it.

 _Of course not_ , Martin thinks, anyway, and feels a prickle of guilt at that. It’s not Jon’s fault he’s slow on the uptake, always has been. Not Jon speaking now. Jon’s not even here, could be lifetimes away. 

“… it is _possible_ ,” Simon is saying, shuffling a little closer again – his foot drops away from Martin as he does so, into the water, so that he’s sitting with both of them hanging off the raft at the knee. “But I do think you have been rather astronomically lucky already. You might have kept falling forever, you know. Lottery win odds that I was here to catch you.”

“That was you?” Martin tries to cast his mind back, but he can’t find the point between the fall and the ocean, isn’t even sure there was one. “Um… thank you?”

Simon leans out, and, almost idly, drops a hand into Martin’s hair. He is allowed one moment of utter confusion, and then the touch changes to a grip, and Simon is pulling, dragging his face towards the fly he’s unfastening. It all seems to happen far too quickly – Martin tries to kick away, but he can’t get a proper purchase in the water, and Simon is far stronger than he looks like he should be. A finger parts his lips, lingers against them for just an instant longer than it needs to, and then Simon’s cock is thrust into his mouth.

Martin tries to recoil, but instead he just seems to lose his grasp on the raft, the only thing anchoring him to it Simon’s hold on the back of his head. Simon, still hardening, gives his hips an experimental jerk, smears himself against Martin’s tongue, pushes deeper.

The water laps at Martin’s neck, his chin, and something in the back of his head starts to shriek that he’s drowning. The panic hits him at full speed, and he shoves out, at anything, at nothing. His throat hums with the volume of a scream muffled to silence, and somewhere, Simon lets out a soft, pleasured accompaniment. 

He scrabbles to get a hold of himself, convince himself that he just needs to stop fighting. This is Simon’s domain. He can’t win here. All he has to do is give the monster what he wants, and then he can get back to Jon, and everything will be fine. As fine as it ever is. Oral isn’t the worst thing that could be happening, all things considered, and if he can get together the peace of mind to give Simon a good time, maybe he can get some help on his way.

It doesn’t work. He can’t swallow that wailing voice of _sinking_ , the dread in the weight of his clothes that wants to carry him beneath the water, down and down into a deep where Jon will never be able to find him again.

One of his thrashing arms knocks hard into the edge of the raft, and Simon’s angle abruptly changes – Martin thinks, for a moment, that he’s knocked him off, has a burst of feeling too great for him to pick out individual emotions, unable to choose between the impulse to drag himself on or the one to help Simon back up and hope he’s not incurred too much wrath – but then the raft is gone. The whole ocean is gone.

He’s falling again, and Simon’s cock is no longer there – he draws in a horrible, aching gasp, rasping relief, that drops away when he realises that he can still feel that grip in his hair, a place where the rushing wind isn’t pulling at his scalp. His eyes find Simon’s blurred shape in front of him, and he thrusts out an elbow, more through reflex than thought, but it doesn’t make contact. He can’t find direction or balance, all of it lost as the blood rushes about his head.

“Is this more your preference?” Simon asks, still perfectly genial. A hand gropes its way between Martin’s thighs, fumbling at him, testing and fondling. He kisses him, leisurely and unworried, a stark contrast to Martin’s own thrumming desperation. His tongue takes its time over Martin’s, and he wonders in some secluded, laughing corner of his brain, whether he can taste himself on there. His fingers slide under Martin’s sodden clothes, insistent, running over his cock like they’re trying to map it, and they don’t _stop_ – somewhere underneath the adrenaline coursing through Martin’s body, he can feel heat rising, wreathing through his spine and collecting at the point where Simon touches him.

He gasps into Simon’s mouth, can feel a whine building in his chest, and he hates it. Hates the want that Simon is almost kneading into him.

Simon breaks the kiss like he wants to hear it better, his mouth moving to explore Martin’s neck, sucking the drying salt from his pulse point – he must feel how fast Martin’s heart is beating, must know that it’s not only from the fall, and maybe that’s why he runs his thumb a little harder down Martin’s cock, making his whole body twitch.

“Jon’s coming,” Martin says. A threat to Simon, to himself, he doesn’t know. He’s losing himself, tumbling, spinning, and the only still point in his existence is Simon, anchored to him.

“I’m sure he is.” Simon tests the skin over Martin’s collarbone with his teeth, and in the places where he marks him, the cold seems to touch him that little bit harder. “But he has a very long way to come.”

His fingers wander, stroking against Martin’s thigh, then up and around to explore his lower back, teasing. Martin arches, and it’s all too much to struggle anymore. Simon touches him, wants him, makes him want, and the wind scours across his nerve endings, another raw, screaming note in the symphony.

He hits the ground. It should shatter him, and for a moment he thinks it has, but then he’s back to Simon kissing him again, hungrier now, dragging his trousers down over where Martin has already come, the material far too rough. He aches with it, sensations like a bow dragged across fiddle strings jarring through him, and he wonders just how many times it could have happened, between the sky and here.

“I’m sorry,” Simon tells him, indulgent and warm. “I know you were enjoying that. But it can be so very difficult to get purchase there.” 

Martin blinks, hazily, and notices the sky again, somewhere beyond him, as Simon explores his mouth, eager and unresisted. He’s never seen it so blue before. It’s bold as oil paint, clouds ridged across it like palette strokes, and he wants to reach up to it, feel it reach back. He thinks it already has.

Then he remembers, blearily, what’s happening. He goes to shove Simon off, but his fledgling sense of balance suddenly pinches up and pulls away, like a magician lifting a cloth, and his arms thump back down beside him. Probably wouldn’t be polite, he supposes, with the fraction of his mind that still functions. Simon’s already got him off, after all.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment that he spreads his legs, if there even is one. Maybe Simon does it himself, and Martin is too caught up in the kissing and the distant burning blue to notice, but he feels it when Simon’s cock thrusts inside him. It hurts. He’s not sure if Simon had been that big in his mouth, couldn’t even say if he’d been all the way in, but he can feel every millimetre now, stretching him wide. Pain and pleasure sparks out through his body, crackling like the lines of a Lichtenberg figure, holding but stuck in a single fierce arc. He whines again, bites his tongue to try and silence it, but Simon presses his jaw open again, licks the sound away himself.

Simon doesn’t bother to touch him anymore. He doesn’t need to, just sets himself an easy, inexorable rhythm that has echoes in Martin’s chest of the swell and tug of the ocean. All that keeps him from begging is that he can no longer find any words or voice to speak with.

Simon comes with a low, contended sigh, pulls out, leaving heat and semen trickling over Martin’s thighs. He smiles down at him, briefly, and then seems to notice the state of Martin’s cock, hard again and leaking.

“Oh, my dear boy,” he says, soft-faced and indulgent again. He lays a hand against Martin’s cheek, running his thumb over his skin, catching tears that Martin doesn’t remember crying. “You should have said.”

Martin’s gone before Simon can even reach for him. He lies there, weak and aching, trying to pull back the pieces of himself back into the fractured heap he calls a self. Hours might pass, before he eventually manages to roll over, and then he startles backwards when there is nothing ahead of him but empty space. One of his hands slips over the edge of the cliff, down a wall of stone that falls away into a mist-wreathed forest far below. His chin jars into the rock, but then something grabs the back of his shirt and hauls him back onto firm ground.

“There we are,” Simon comments, letting him go again. “Can’t have that. Just a little rest, and then we’ll get you back to the Archivist.”

Martin scrabbles up, tries to stagger to his feet. His legs won’t hold him, drop him onto his knees again. Simon smiles benevolently down at him, with only the faintest twitch of his eyebrows.

“Jon is going to kill you,” Martin says, so ragged that he’s hardly able to get it out.

“And why on earth would he do that?” Simon’s expression doesn’t even falter, his voice pitched just in that particular range of charming that he has.

“You… you _assaulted_ me,” Martin manages. He tries to push himself further up, have some height on Simon at the very least, but there’s still no strength in his limbs.

“Did I really?” Simon’s face twitches, and a slight furrow appears on his forehead. It’s barely perceptible – Martin doubts he’d be able to pick up on it, if he hadn’t just been granted the opportunity to examine Simon’s features far more closely than he would ever have chosen to. “I’m afraid that’s not quite how I remember it. You were falling – and there’s nothing to be done about that, it’s just something that happens, here – and I, being the generous man that I am, thought, well, that won’t do, so I stepped in and helped you out. And then, well, you were so grateful, weren’t you?”

“You didn’t–” Martin hesitates, tries to go over it again in his head, force out that faint seed of doubt that Simon’s words have planted. “I didn’t _want_ –” 

“Terribly sorry if I’ve misunderstood,” Simon interjects, though there’s none of that in his tone. He leans over a little, peering at Martin. “But I have to say, you certainly seemed to be enjoying yourself at the time. I mean, just look at you. You’re something well-fucked if ever I’ve seen it.”

Martin flinches. He closes his eyes, presses his face into the crook of his arm. It’s wet, still, and he remembers that he was in the ocean, once. It might be that, or it might be pleasure or pain or everything in between.

“I’m sure it’s just the sort of little misunderstanding that the Archivist could sort out for us,” Simon goes on, and it feels a little more pointed. Maybe Martin’s just imagining it. “We can ask him when we get there. If you’re quite certain you didn’t want it.”

 _I didn’t_ , Martin thinks, with as much will as he can muster, but then he feels Simon step closer, skim his fingers over the nape of his neck, and there’s a thrill of aftershock through his blood.

“No,” Martin whispers. “No, he – he’ll kill you anyway. You’re a murderer, you’ve–”

“Not to worry,” Simon assures him. He places his hand more firmly, gives a slight squeeze, and Martin fights to swallow a sob. “My understanding is that it doesn’t really matter _how_ many people you’ve killed, just so long as you’re helpful. Or has he done away with the Distortion now? No?” 

Martin can’t respond. He doesn’t trust his voice. Doesn’t trust anything.

“And really, I _am_ doing him a favour,” Simon continues, bright as that sky beyond him. “It would be quite rude of him to kill me. After all, if I hadn’t been around to catch you – well, this place is… truly unending. I’m sure he cares a great deal for you, but you have to wonder how long he’d be willing to fall for.”

Martin hangs his head, and lets out a slow breath, uncovering his face. Whatever it was, it’s done, now.

“Anyway.” Simon pats at him, the picture of amiable comfort. “We’ll give you some time to catch your breath, and then we can be on our way.” He pauses, and his hand slides around, cups Martin’s chin and tilts his face upwards again. “Unless you’d like to have another go at that first thing. I think we could do better.”

Martin shakes his head, and tries to push himself up again, so that he’s no longer quite so level with Simon’s crotch. His knees hold, this time, though he still feels unsteady, uncertain. He imagines he’ll still be feeling the drift of that around his thoughts for a long time yet.

“I just want to go,” he says, and covers the shake in his voice by occupying himself refastening his own clothes.

“Of course.” Simon steps away from him, with a broad grin. “Maybe later. We’ll see how we get on. I can’t _quite_ remember the way back to the planetarium, you’ll have to forgive that of an old man. There may still be a lot of falling for us to do yet.”


End file.
